NY Times Bashing Virginia Again

This is a discussion on NY Times Bashing Virginia Again within the The Second Amendment & Gun Legislation Discussion forums, part of the Related Topics category; Editorial in today's NY Times.
As usual, lots of innuendo and lies.
The “Iron Pipeline” of Interstate 95 remains alive and deadly, as a new ...

NY Times Bashing Virginia Again

Editorial in today's NY Times.

As usual, lots of innuendo and lies.

The “Iron Pipeline” of Interstate 95 remains alive and deadly, as a new federal study grimly confirms. Saddest of all is the evidence that some of the most far-reaching shady gun marts continue to operate in the state of Virginia, where the suicidal Virginia Tech student shot 32 people to death only four months ago. Virginia dealers have been a standout source for guns used in crimes up and down the seaboard, according to the federal study. They accounted for half of the 10,000 guns tracked by the study in the metropolitan Washington, D.C., area, and one in 11 in New York City.

Richmond officials deny their gun control laws are porous, particularly now that the state announced it was closing the loophole that allowed the Virginia Tech marauder to legally buy guns despite his documented history of mental disturbance. But for every loophole closed in the wake of the nation’s latest gun mayhem — from Columbine to the D.C. sniper, ad infinitum — others beg attention in the crazy quilt of state and federal regulations cynically manipulated by the gun lobby.

For all the official dedication to closure in Richmond these days, the State Legislature rejected a proposal to close the egregious loophole by which “private” (i.e. unlicensed) dealers sell weapons at weekend gun shows free of the federal obligation to conduct background checks on buyers. More than a quarter of the dealers have been found selling guns as easily as midway trinkets. Their lethal marts should be flying the skull-and-bones of pirates — the better to attract sportsmen shoppers.

Virginia is hardly alone in following the gun lobby’s diktat to protect laissez-faire gun shows. But political cowardice only compounds the grief at Virginia Tech over its contribution to the domestic gun toll of 30,000 lives a year. In Richmond, where pressure from the bloody campus was greatest, the vote to retain the gun show loophole was close. But now a legislative battle looms over the gun lobby’s brazen counterinitiative to legalize concealed weapons on campus.

When I was working in television, I spent quite a bit of time in New York City. There are lots of things about the place I like, but New York gun laws don't fall in that category.

Anybody who knows me knows I've always cared deeply about the Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms. So I've always felt sort of relieved when I flew back home to where that particular civil liberty gets as much respect as the rest of the Bill of Rights.

Unfortunately, New York is trying, again, to force its ways on the rest of us, this time through the courts. First, they went after U.S. gun manufacturers, seeking through a lawsuit not only money but injunctive control over the entire industry. An act of congress in 2005 blocked, but did not end, that effort.

Now, the same activist federal judge from Brooklyn who provided Mayor Giuliani’s administration with the legal ruling it sought to sue gun makers, has done it again. Last week, he created a bizarre justification to allow New York City to sue out-of-state gun stores that sold guns that somehow ended up in criminal hands in the Big Apple.

The lawsuit has been a lesson in out-of-control government from the get-go. Mayor Bloomberg sent private investigators to make "straw" purchases – illegally buying guns for somebody else. According to the ATF, NY's illegal "stings" interfered with ongoing investigations of real gun traffickers.

Obviously, New York won't get much cash out of the few dozen shops being sued in Georgia, Ohio, Pennsylvania, South Carolina and Virginia; so the purpose can only be political. Some of those sued have already buckled under the financial strain of legal defense and agreed to live by New York City rules.

Ironically, all of this comes at a time of historically low violent crime rates and historically high gun ownership rates nationally. States where it is legal to carry guns are also at an all-time high, up to 40 from 10 in 1987 by NRA reckoning.

While this attack by New York City on the Second Amendment reinforces the importance of appointing judges who apply the law as written, there is another important legal point. Federalism, though usually seen as a protection of the states from the federal government, actually grew out of the need to protect states from other states that interfered in free commerce beyond their borders – as New York is doing today. In this case, we need Federalism to protect states from a big bully in New York City.

Blooming Idiot should look to his own state before blaming others..........

(courtesy VCDL)

......DC, for example, more guns were traced back to Maryland than Virginia.

The trace data doesn't differentiate between guns purchased illegally in VA and stolen guns that were originally purchased legally in VA. Trace data also includes information on guns that were simply checked for stolen that weren't stolen nor used in a crime.

Looking at New York: 1,784 guns traced came from New York. 530 were traced to Virginia, but 461 to Pennsylvania, 443 to Georgia, 410 to South Carolina. Heck even 107 were traced to California!

Picking another east coast state at random - Massachusetts: 334 guns from Massachusetts, 99 guns from New Hampshire, 65 from Maine, 57 from Florida, 55 from Georgia, 43 from Virginia.

In Connecticut, more guns came from New York than any other state
except Connecticut! Explain that Mr. Bloomberg. The breakdown: 794 from Connecticut, 34 from New York, 29 from Georgia, 28 each from Virginia, North Carolina, and Florida.

In Rhode Island, 102 guns came from Rhode Island, 18 from Massachusetts, 8 from New Hampshire, 7 from Georgia, 6 from Virginia. They even had 3 from Alaska ;-)

In North Carolina, 5,511 guns came from North Carolina, 327 from South Carolina, 301 from Virginia. 45 came from New York, Mr. Bloomberg.

Compared to the number of guns sold in Virginia, the number showing up in other states is minuscule.

Also, when looking at the time from initial purchase to gun trace, the vast majority of the traces are on guns over 3 years old. That sounds like a good number of the traced guns were stolen.

In the end, looking at this data just confirms that Virginia needs to get rid of its One-Gun-A-Month law, as it isn't doing anything useful. VCDL knew that, the data just proves us right.

Poking around with the data, I'm just not seeing Virginia standing out that much. What I am seeing is that criminals in New York have a
network setup in quite a few states. Perhaps Bloomberg should take care of his New York criminals and shut down the pipeline from his end? That would do a lot to lower the amount of illegal drugs coming
into Virginia from New York, too.

I watched something on the Discovery Channel a few days ago that said that they were predicting a hurricane will hit NYC in the next couple of years. They showed a computer models on what is going to possibility happen. If what they say does come true then NYC will have to go under Marshal Law and there will be riots in the streets. People in NYC are going to be wishing they didn’t support all the gun control, because people are going to need them to defend themselves.

I don’t want to see something like this happen for many reasons (loss of life, taxes going up to help rebuild), but what really scares me is the financial difficulty this will create for our country.

lol - If a hurricane of significant magnitude hit NYC it'd be like New Orleans times a few million on the riot/mayhem scale. Would give a whole new meaning to turning the lights on and watches the cockroaches scurry.

"Sure, As long as the machines are workin' and you can call 911. But you take those things away, you throw people in the dark, and you scare the crap out of them; no more rules...You'll see how primitive they can get."

I live on Long Island and often think about hurricanes. NYC would be bad but it would not be New Orleans. Most of NYC is above sea level and will not flood indefinetly like NO did. Power will be the major issue... If power goes out for any significant period there will be real problems though.

Now, the same activist federal judge from Brooklyn who provided Mayor Giuliani’s administration with the legal ruling it sought to sue gun makers, has done it again. Last week, he created a bizarre justification to allow New York City to sue out-of-state gun stores that sold guns that somehow ended up in criminal hands in the Big Apple.

While this attack by New York City on the Second Amendment reinforces the importance of appointing judges who apply the law as written, there is another important legal point. Federalism, though usually seen as a protection of the states from the federal government, actually grew out of the need to protect states from other states that interfered in free commerce beyond their borders – as New York is doing today. In this case, we need Federalism to protect states from a big bully in New York City.

While I mostly agree with this writing by Mr. Thompson, several things in here just aren't right.

First, there's no such thing as an "activist judge". This term gets thrown around every time a judge makes a ruling someone doesn't like.

The other is the idea of judges applying the law as it's written. That's not the way our legal system works! If you don't like it, then we need to change our legal system, not blame the judges for doing as they're trained to do.

The fundamental problem is that we use the idiotic and brain-dead system of English Common Law. The "laws" passed by legislatures are only guides; the REAL laws are those passed by judges on the bench. Don't like it? Too bad; that's the way it works. It's called "legal precedence". If some judge makes a stupid ruling, that ruling has precedence, and becomes the law of the land for future cases. If effect, the laws which really govern us come from the courtroom, not the legislative chambers.

If we were smart like every other country on earth (except stupid England of course), we'd be using French Civil Law, which is directly descended from Roman Law. You want judges to merely interpret and apply the laws as they're written? That's the way it works in Civil Law. Better yet, they even have judges who are NOT lawyers; they're an entirely separate profession.

Do we hear about insanity in the courtroom from most other countries besides England? Of course not. That's because they all use Civil Law. Judges don't have the power to create new laws in those countries. The only way we're going to end the insanity in our own courtrooms is to adopt Civil Law like everyone else.